Munich

Munich

The City of Munich is trying to support solar energy generation with several initiatives and on different levels.

Solarthermal – a urbanistic project concerning seasonal heating

In the late 90s we started in our local Planning Department developing a project supplying solar energy to the heating system of housing areas. After several basic studies decision fell on a new area being developed – a former military barracks – called Ackermannbogen (the name of enclosing street : http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/plan... in german).
So the solarthermal project is called “Solare Nahwärme am Ackermannbogen” or shortly “SNAB”. The idea is collecting solar heat and supplying a 6000 cubic meter storage, so the heat can be used in those month were heat is needed. 50% of the demand should be supplied by solar heat. Final evaluation of the project, that was finished two years ago is still ongoing.

The project was funded by national Ministry of Research within the funding.
The external Partners were ZAE and Solites in Stuttgart.

Since last years decision of municipal council on every new urban development with more than 500 apartments there is a obligatory check on quality of solarisation of the architectural and urbanistic design so that recommendations on optimisation will be reflected. More about the software on following link : (in german) http://www.gosol.de

Photovoltaic

Munich City Utilities (SWM) commited last year in serving 100% of electricity demand by local households on 2015 supplied by renevables. As there is no vision how the local resources (water, wind, PV, biomass) could be developed efficiently the demand is not being satisfied locally but by investing in big projects in the north sea or in big solarpower plants generating electricity in southern Spain (andasol3). Local politicians wanted an amount of at least 10% being earned locally :
Munich started last autumn an feasibility study (presented February, 10th) aiming to develop structures (f.e. an responsible actor, organisation), that the local activities in multiplicating solar power generation can be supported by developing synergies. There will be established in about 3 month a organisation that actually is being designed with the aims of “collecting” roofs on one hand and investors’ money on the other to increase solar generated amount of local electricity. Name of this project is Solar Initiative Munich, with the acronym “SIM” (with the slogan : „München solar durchDacht“ that means “Thinking through or about solarisation”, reflecting a play on words : the word “durchDacht” (“thinking about” shows a big “D” so it also means “through Roofing” – “Dach” is roof)
More information on this project in some month.

Photovoltaic

Local NGO GreenCity’s daughter GreenCity Energy – since the year 2000 specialized in developing “on roof solarplants” planned and realized by the experts and being financed by interested citizens sharing the idea of PV – last week released a new investment : in 7 days 80 investors funded 1 Mio EUR supporting the financing of a 1,12 MWp plant that covers 11.600 square meters of the roofs of several factory buildings owned by automotive enterprise AUDI in Ingolstadt, around 80 km north of the bavarian capital, with a total investment of 3,9 Mio. €. (More : http://www.greencity-energy.de/en/s... german, press release : http://www.pressebox.de/pressemeldu... german http://www.audi.de/de/brand/de/unte... )